Dr. Mary C. Lacity
233 Express Scripts Hall
(314) 516-6127
(314)
516-6827 (fax)
Email:
Mary.Lacity@umsl.edu
Homepage: http://www.umsl.edu/~lacitym
Meeting Place: 103 ESH
Meeting Dates:
Saturday
November
Friday
December
Friday
January 20, 2017
Friday
Saturday January 21
Friday
February
Start Time: 1:30
Course Description:
Largely fostered by
globalization, the Internet, processing standards, and software innovations,
organizations aim to provide business services anytime, anywhere, and on any
device. This course covers SOURCING
and AUTOMATION topics to help managers
deliver business services better, faster, cheaper and with good social impacts.
Students will investigate sourcing options such as outsourcing, offshoring,
shared services, captive centers, cloud sourcing, impact sourcing, prison
sourcing, crowd sourcing, and rural sourcing.
Students will investigate automation innovations such as robotic process
automation, cognitive automation, and Blockchain. The course covers all types
of business services, including IT, financial and accounting services, human
resource services, call centers, procurement, real estate services, legal
services, and other back office services.
Dr.
Lacity is
Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Information Systems and an International
Business Fellow at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Visiting Scholar at MIT CISR. She is also a Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly Executive and on the
Editorial Boards for Journal
of Information Technology, MIS
Quarterly Executive, IEEE Transactions on Engineering
Management, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and Strategic Outsourcing: An
International Journal. She has held visiting positions at the London
School of Economics, Washington University, and Oxford University. She is a Certified Outsourcing Professional ®, Industry Advisor for
the Everest Group, and
Co-editor of the Palgrave Series: Work, Technology, and
Globalization. Her research focuses on the delivery of
business and IT services through global sourcing and automation. She has conducted case studies and
surveys of hundreds of organizations on their outsourcing, automation and
management practices. She has given keynote speeches and executive seminars
world-wide and has served as an expert witness for the US Congress. She was inducted into the IAOP’s
Outsourcing Hall of Fame in 2014, one of only three academics to ever be
inducted. She was the recipient of the 2008 Gateway to Innovation Award
sponsored by the IT Coalition,
Society for Information Management, and St. Louis RCGA and the 2000 World Outsourcing
Achievement Award sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Michael Corbett and
Associates. She has published 25
books, most recently Service Automation:
Robots and the Future of Work (Brookes Publishing, 2016, UK, co-author Leslie Willcocks) and Nine Keys to World-class Business Process Outsourcing (Bloomsbury
Publishing, London, 2015; co-author Leslie Willcocks). Her publications have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, MIS Quarterly
Executive, IEEE Computer, Communications of the ACM, and many other academic and
practitioner outlets. Before earning her Ph.D. at the University of Houston,
she worked as a consultant for Technology Partners International and as a
systems analyst for Exxon Company, USA.
Required Course Materials:
|
Outsourcing
Professional Body of Knowledge, by International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (2014), Van
Haren Publishing. The IAOP will give you a complimentary copy as long as you register as
student on their site. I will explain
how to do this in class. Printed
Copy: Amazon |
|
Cullen,
S., Lacity, M., and Willcocks, L. (2014), Outsourcing:
All You Need to Know, White Plume Publishing, Melbourne. Digital
Copy: http://whiteplumepublishing.com/ Printed
Copy: Amazon |
|
Willcocks, L. and Lacity, M. (2016), Service Automation: Robots and the Future of Work, Brookes
Publishing, UK. |
|
Tapscott,
D., and Tapscott, A. (2016), Blockchain
Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business,
and the World, Penguin Random House, NYC ISBN: 978-1101980132 |
Additional assigned readings and webinars as
posted on MyGateway |
Assessment Item |
Percentage of Grade |
Due Date |
Exam 1 (Take Online)
|
25%
|
by Wed Jan 11 8:00 am
|
Exam 2 (Take Online)
|
25%
|
by Wed Feb 8 8:00 am |
Group Presentation |
30%
|
See
Schedule
|
Prison Sourcing Teaching Case |
5%
|
See Schedule |
Radiant Law Teaching Case |
5%
|
See Schedule |
BlueCrossBlueShield NC Teaching Case |
5%
|
See Schedule |
Class Participation |
5%
|
Attendance and active class
participation |
Do not open the test until after you have
read/watched the required materials and you have studied. You may use
your notes, readings, power point slides to answer questions. You may not
speak with other students about the exam.
Grading Philosophy:
My grading philosophy is that professors do
not “give” grades. Students “earn” grades. I take grading very
seriously. I thoughtfully grade each assessment item on the
assessment sheets. A sub-culture has emerged among some (certainly
not all) graduate students that graduate students are “customers” and that
everything they do should be awards an A. Such a view dilutes the value
of your education, and as a professor I cannot possibly hold this view. I
am morally obligated to clearly define expectations (which I do on a very
detailed syllabus and detailed assignments), to help you as much as I can
before your assignments are due, and to grade the actual performance using the
assessment sheets. All that said, I have great
empathy for college students, having been one myself for nine
years! I care about your learning. No one would be happier than I
to see all students earn high grades! In this class, the letter grades
use the following scale:
92.00 or above |
A |
90.00 to 91.99 |
A- |
88.00 to 89.99 |
B+ |
82.00 to 87.99 |
B |
80.00 to 81.99 |
B- |
78.00 to 79.99 |
C+ |
72.00 to 77.99 |
C |
70.00 to 71.99 |
C- |
Below 70.00 |
F |
Class
Participation:
The class only meets face-to-face
a few times so it is vital that students attend all classes. Students who must miss a class must watch
class recording and submitting short essays on missed material in order to
complete the course.
In
Class Teaching Case Presentations
Students
will prepare and lead the discussion of three teaching cases in class:
·
Lacity, M., and Willcocks, L. (2016), “Rethinking Legal Services
in the Face of Globalization and Technology Innovation: The Case of Radiant
Law”, Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases,
Vol. 5, 1, pp. 15-22.
·
Lacity, M., Rottman, J., and Carmel, E. (2014), "Prison
Sourcing: “Doing Good” or “Good for Business”?, Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases
·
Dunlap, R., and Lacity, M. (2016), “Resolving Tussles in Service
Automation Deployments: Service Automation at Blue Cross Blue Shield North
Carolina”, Journal of
Information Technology Teaching Cases,
Vol. 5, 2
The class will be
divided into four groups, three to four students each. Each group will be responsible for leading a
ten minute discussion of specific questions.
The cases and the questions are on MyGateway. The group presentations will be graded using
the in-case
grade assessment sheet.
Oral
Group Presentation:
Each group is responsible for
presenting a 50 minute presentation to the class.
Each group will be assigned a
different business service topic from among the following:
·
Political View: Is
outsourcing good or bad for the US Economy?
·
Political
View: Is automation good or bad for the US Economy?
Offshoring: Continent &
Country Focus: (PICK ONE):
·
ITO and BPO in Central/South America
or
RESEARCH
BASE:
Secondary Resources.
Each group should research at least 20
external references such as journal articles, newspapers, short videos, or
relevant websites. Some excellent sources
that cover the ITO and BPO markets are:
At least 10 of these references
must be from refereed journals or
academic journals for practitioners, such as Sloan Management Review,
Harvard Business Review, MIS Quarterly Executive, Academy
of Management Perspectives. Refereed journals assure some level of
validation. The academic articles don’t
have to be limited to just your narrow topic (such as Egypt), but can include
academic articles on outsourcing in general, surveys of outsourcing, theories
or outsourcing, literature reviews on outsourcing, etc. The best source to find
refereed journal articles is ABI-INFORM, available online to UMSL
students. To find refereed articles,
simply tick the box for “peer-reviewed ” while in ABI inform.
Many students liven up their presentations by including
short video clips about their topic (such as a youtube video).
Primary Resources. Students should conduct three to
four original interviews for their group projects. Another potential
source of primary data is an original survey.
For example, a past group surveyed lawyers to see if they would
outsource any legal work. Another group
surveyed graduate students to assess their level of participation in
crowdsourcing.
PRESENTATION TIMING:
Each group should only plan 40 minutes of
content to allow 10 minutes of audience interaction during the presentation. Think of yourselves not as formal
speakers, but as teachers. You should incorporate the audience during the
entire presentation. In the past, students
have done very creative things for audience participation including a short
Jeopardy game, a bingo game, a short survey, a guess the provider logo game,
etc.
PRESENTATION
MATERIALS:
Each group will develop power point slides (or a Prezi or
another presentation format).
On the day of your presentation, please provide a
STAPLED, hardcopy set the slides for your instructor. Please print only 2
slides per page.
Please load your final power point slides in GROUP X Group
Pages under FILE EXCHANGE.
Please name the final version of your power point slides
exactly as indicated below:
Group |
Oral
Presentation File Name File names are case sensitive |
G1Winter17.pptx |
|
Group 2: |
G2Winter17.pptx |
Group 3: |
G3Winter17.pptx |
Group 4: |
G4Winter17.pptx |
CITATIONS:
Make sure
that every slide appropriately credits sources, be it an
interview, printed material, or web site.
DO NOT PLAGERIZE!!!! You may
not copy directly from sources unless you indent the text and put it in
quotes. This would normally be reserved
for a few sentences of specific quotations.
You must RE-WORD sources! You are
using external references as INPUT to your originally created OUTPUT.
Professors take plagiarism very seriously and any student who copies directly
from the web or printed sources will be turned over to Academic Affairs.
I am very happy to work with groups on their
specific topic. I strongly suggest that I meet with your groups
several times. At a MINIMUM, I want to review your power point slides at least a week
before your presentation. Please feel free to email me to make an
appointment in person, or we can do it over the phone or online as well.
Oral Group Presentation Grades:
Oral
presentations are graded as a group grade rather than as individual
grades.
Most oral
group presentations will be graded using the following form oral group grade form:, except geographic oral group
presentations will be graded using the following form: oral group
grade form
All group members will receive the same grade
for the oral presentation, provided that all members agree that each individual
made a significant contribution. If a group member has not meaningfully or
fully participated, I will assume that group member was legitimately distracted
by other life issues such as illness or heavy work travel. I do expect that
members who do not fully participate show their integrity by willingly reducing their percentage of contribution.
It is no shame to not fully participate because of legitimate reasons. It is a great shame to expect other group
members to falsely report contribution percentages.
In order to provide some accountability,
albeit imperfect, I will ask that each group fill in the following form and
each group member must sign it. This form is due on the day of presentation.
Please
print, fill in, and have every member sign a copy of: group contribution form .
DATE
|
ACTIVITY |
TIME |
COMMENTS |
Saturday November 12
|
Course Overview |
1:30- 3:00 |
Understand: · How to navigate self-study modules · Overview of course content |
Assign Students to Group Projects |
3:30 to 5:00 |
Understand: · How group projects will be graded · How to find academic references · How to stay on track |
|
Friday December 9 |
Guest Speaker |
1:30 to 3:00 |
Shane Mayes, Founder and CEO of
Onshore Outsourcing http://onshoreoutsourcing.com/ Prior
to class, please peruse Lacity, M., Rottman, J., and Carmel, E. (2012), Emerging ITO and BPO Markets: Rural
Sourcing and Impact Sourcing, IEEE Readynotes, IEEE Computer Society. |
Guest Speaker |
3:30 to 4:45 |
Rich Etzkorn, Executive Managing Director, Cushman and Wakefield Real estate services outsourcing guest speaker |
|
Friday Jan 20 |
Radiant Law Case |
1:00 to 2:15 |
|
Prison Sourcing Case |
2:30 to 3:45 |
|
|
Saturday January 21 |
Group
Crowdsourcing Group
Impact Sourcing |
1:00 to 1:50 2:00 to 2:50 |
|
Friday February 10 |
BCBSNC Case |
1:00 to 2:15 |
|
Group
BPO Group
Robots |
2:45 to 3:35 3:45 to 4:25 |
|
Course
Self-Study Tracks:
SOURCING: Students will tell
me which sourcing track they wish to complete:
FOUNDATIONAL SOURCING: Students new to
outsourcing/offshoring should complete the sourcing foundational modules that cover
sourcing decisions from the initiation of a sourcing decision and evaluation
process through to service provider selection and transition to
outsourcing. The foundational management
practices needed to ensure good outsourcing outcomes for both parties are also
covered.
ADVANCED SOURCING: Students with a
basic understanding of outsourcing/offshoring will want to skip the foundations
and instead complete the advanced sourcing modules on innovation, cloud
sourcing, and nine keys to world-class services.
AUTOMATION AND THE FUTURE OF WORK
All students will
complete the modules that cover robotic process and cognitive automation and
Blockchain.
EXAM 1: FOUNDATIONAL SOURCING
OPTION |
||
Module |
Learning Objectives |
Readings/Webinars |
OVERVIEW: Delivery of business services through
sourcing and automation |
Understand
definition of global sourcing; Understand
challenges facing back office managers; Understand
the major transformation approaches; Understand
size of global outsourcing markets; Understand
outsourcing success rates; Understand
why outsourcing is so challenging to client organizations; Learn what clients need to master to achieve global sourcing objectives Understand how automation will affect global services Understand RPA vs. CA |
Listen to the VoiceThread
recording |
Compilation of
Research from the Last Twenty Years |
Understand sourcing choices (options, locations, provider) Understand determinants of sourcing choices (motivations, transaction attributes, influence sources) Understand determinants of sourcing outcomes (contractual governance, relational
governance, client retained capabilities, provider capabilities) |
Read: REQUIRED:
Chapter 1 of Outsourcing: All You Need to Know Listen to the Webinar recordings |
Moving to the Strategic Agenda |
Understand five reasons why CEOs should pay attention to ITO and BPO Two sourcing decision matrices |
Read: REQUIRED: Outsourcing
Professional Body of Knowledge, IAOP, Van Haren Publishing, CHAPTER 1 Read: REQUIRED: Chapter 2 of Outsourcing: All You Need to
Know Listen to the Webinar recording |
Decision Process |
Understand importance of a detailed
evaluation process Know the four phases and nine building blocks
of the outsourcing life cycle. IAOP Global
Outsourcing 100—how are service providers assessed? |
Read: REQUIRED: Chapters 5-9 of Outsourcing: All You Need
to Know Read: REQUIRED:
Outsourcing Professional Body of Knowledge, IAOP, Van Haren Publishing,
CHAPTERS 5 and 6. IAOP
Lists of top providers/advisors listed in mygateway. Listen to the Webinar recordings |
Offshore
Outsourcing |
Understand the
benefits of offshoring from the perspective of front line employees Understand the challenges
of offshoring from the perspective of
front line employees Four executive
practices to ensure offshoring success |
Read: REQUIRED: Chapter 14 of Outsourcing: All You Need
to Know Listen to Webinar Recording |
EXAM 1: ADVANCED SOURCING OPTION |
||
Module |
Learning Objectives |
Readings/Webinars |
OVERVIEW: Delivery of business services through
sourcing and automation |
Understand definition of global sourcing; Understand challenges facing back office
managers; Understand the major transformation
approaches; Understand size of global outsourcing
markets; Understand outsourcing success rates; Understand why outsourcing is so
challenging to client organizations; Learn what clients need to master to achieve global sourcing objectives |
Listen to the VoiceThread
recording |
Compilation of
Research from the Last Twenty Years |
Understand sourcing choices (options, locations, provider) Understand determinants of sourcing choices (motivations, transaction attributes, influence sources) Understand determinants of sourcing outcomes (contractual governance, relational
governance, client retained capabilities, provider capabilities) |
Read: REQUIRED:
Chapter 1 of Outsourcing: All You Need to Know Listen to the Webinar recordings |
Innovation |
Types of innovations in outsourcing Collaborative innovation process Best practices for incentivizing and delivering innovation |
Read: REQUIRED: Chapter 13 of Outsourcing: All You Need
to Know Listen to Webinar Recording |
Cloud Services |
Understand: · What
value do clients seek from outsourcing and cloud services? · What
practices ensure success? · Is cloud
services is becoming the “great equalizer” between large and small-sized
firms? |
Read: Loebbecke,
C., Thomas, B., and Ulrich, T., “Assessing Cloud Readiness at Continental
AG,”MIS Quarterly Executive, (11)1: 11-23. Read: Lacity, M.,
and Reynolds, P. (2014), “Cloud Services Practices for Small and Medium-sized
Enterprises,” MIS Quarterly
Executive, Vol. 13, 1, pp. 31-44. Listen to the Webinar recording |
Nine Keys to World
Class BPO |
Be able to identify nine keys to world-class BPO; Ten attributes of effective leadership pairs (note: know
the webinar version which removes individual performance and adds
empathy to ten attributes discussed in Pulse) |
Lacity, M., and Willcocks, L. (2014),
“Nine Practices for Best-in-Class BPO Performance,” MIS
Quarterly Executive, Vol. 13, 3, pp. 131-146. Lacity, M., Willcocks, L., and Yan, A. (2014), “Leadership Pairs Behind High
Outsourcing Performance”, Pulse
Magazine, Issue 9, pp. 52-57. Listen to the Webinar recording |
EXAM 2: AUTOMATION AND THE
FUTURE OF SERVICES |
||
Module |
Learning Objectives |
Readings/Webinars |
Robotic Process and
Cognitive Automation |
Identify best practices for realizing business benefits from service
automation Understand the three philosophical views of technology Understand how service automation might affect location attractiveness |
Read Chapters 2, 3, 5, and
10; Willcocks, L. and Lacity, M. (2016), Service
Automation: Robots and the Future of Work, Brooks Publishing, UK Listen to the VoiceThread
Recording Watch TedTalk by David Moss,
CTO of BluePrism: White Collar Robots: The Virtual Workforce: |
Blockchain |
Understand that Blockchain is the
underlying protocol that enables the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Understand Bitcoin and Blockchain so you
can ponder the more provocative idea of applying Blockchain to transform or
disrupt business models in other industries. |
Read Chapters 1, 2, 10: Tapscott, D., and
Tapscott, A. (2016), Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin
Is Changing Money, Business, and the World, Penguin Random House, NY |